Yin and Yang 2
by Larania Drake
Summary: The Great Saiyaman fails to stop the murders, and the Watchers get involved. Also, why is Vegeta interested? Doesn't he bother people enough?


Yin and Yang 2

Disclaimer: DBZ belongs to Funimation, and Highlander belongs to Rysher, and I make no money from this. I have a bum knee, and if you want that, I can probably give that to you, cause I have no money.

_He was still there, watching, waiting._

_She could feel his presence not only from the tell tale tingle, but in the sense that the sun would never come out again._

_Turning, she screamed, seeing the trail of dead bodies in his wake, and most of them were mortals. Her eyes widened as she realized what he had been doing. Fearing what it would mean, she tried-_

Karen woke up, in her little camp, shivering. Why was she having these dreams? Problems with the questions of right and wrong, of good and evil were what had driven her out here, why she had stopped having any contact with people. Why did she have to be the one to face these questions?

Karen had been alive one thousand, nine hundred years, and felt like she hadn't learned anything new. Getting up from her sweaty bedroll, she went and splashed her face with some water from the stream. It was then that she smiled, faintly.

"You can come on out, now," she told the presence that she knew was there, though she couldn't have said how.

Piccolo had been waiting for her to wake up. _She must have sensed my ki,_ he thought. Her sense of power was unmistakable, even though she was no were near as strong as the Z warriors. He shook his head. It was just the way that she held herself, with more dignity and weightiness than most people ever had time to develop. She seemed so _old._

They smirked at each other.

The both stood there, silently, until Karen moved. Striking with her left heel, she delivered a hook kick, landed, and tried to turn it into a jumping back kick.

Piccolo recovered, blocked, and sent a punch to her jaw, even as she twisted her neck, making him miss.

They tossed blows back and forth for a few minutes, when Piccolo powered up, sending a ki blast that threw Karen into a tree.

"Nice little warm up," said Piccolo, and he almost smiled. They had both been holding back. Karen, who had recovered as fast as Yamcha or Tien would have, stood in front of him again.

"I think I could learn a lot from you," she said in an off hand sort of way. Cocking her head to the side, she cut her eyes back to him. "It would also give you a sparring partner who might show you a few tricks. Game?"

Piccolo considered the thought. He hadn't had a regular sparring partner since Gohan had started spending so much of his time with Videl, and she wouldn't complain the way Gohan had. In fact, this promised to be a lot of fun…

Karen smiled with relief when he nodded. You didn't have much time to think about the meaning of life and the universe when you were having the crap beat of you.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Bura's worst fears were realized when she got an urgent report from the Watchers' Council. 

While it wasn't the Gathering, it was an immortal psychopath, and there wasn't anything they could do about it. She sneered at the thought. They would only watch. Looking up, she saw the calendar. In the next few days, she would be having her pre-arranged meeting with her Immortal. Her sneer softened a bit. The Old Lady was nice enough, she had long ago decided, but that didn't mean that she wanted to spend that long around her. Some immortals had covert arrangements with their Watchers. They would report what they were doing, who they fought with, killed, etc., in return for not having their entire lives watched. The Old Lady had decided it would be less than fair for her to drag the mortal tracking her life through whatever wilderness escapade that she was on at whatever time, so she told her then Watcher, four hundred years before, that she would meet her current Watcher at a certain place and time, once every ten years. 

She was looking through her file on a computer in the kitchen, sipping a cup of coffee. The most recent picture of the Old Lady was on the screen. Scrolling down, she found that she actually enjoyed reading the Immortals' files. 

She tittered to herself. It was just like a historical romance!

There were other pictures, of course, of her in various times in history, and a few rough sketches as the dates became farther and farther into the past. She had just gotten to the part of her being in a civil war, when –

A faint breath of air was all the warning she had. Looking up, she noticed Vegeta watching her from behind, reading over her shoulder. 

Giggling nervously, she looked at him, trying to shield the screen with her body.

"Vegeta!," she said, trying to sound more air-headed than she usually did. "Is there anything can help you with?"

He gave her his usual smirk. "I was wondering what could have gotten an extremely stupid example of an idiotic race so interested that they would have been in here for three hours." In Vegeta speak, this meant he wanted to know what she was doing. Glancing down at the tiny clock on her screen, she saw that he was right. She hadn't even noticed that her coffee was ice cold.

"Well," she rushed to explain, "it was something that a friend forwarded to me. It was a really interesting bit of a novel, and- Are you sure that there isn't anything I can get you? It must have been a while since you last ate!" She said this with her usual empty mindedness, but the mention of food emptied her son in law of any suspicion. 

Bura hadn't really been afraid of Vegeta in a long time. She taught her daughter all the tricks a woman needs to keep a man in line, and Vegeta, Prince and alien that he may have been, was still male.

Still, Watcher business was something very serious, and she couldn't let her family know about it. They, and she, would be killed if she ever broke her oath, no matter how snoopy her son-in-law might be. A little shiver ran down her spine. Vegeta was eyeing her, so she started to talk very brightly about his clothing, and the next time he would go shopping.He lost interested quickly.

He was powerful, but the Watchers knew things that would even make him afraid.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Gohan glided over the city in his Great Saiyaman disguise, after school, hoping that none of the murders would ever take place when he couldn't stop it. For the most part, he went unnoticed, although occasionally a little kid would look and shout, "Hey, there went that flying guy in a bandana!"

Well, they could be shouting worse things.

He and Videl had been patrolling everyday recently, and it was beginning to tell on both of them. They were thinking that maybe they should take a day off. Even as he thought that, there was a scream.

Looking down, he saw that it was something that was really frightening. There was a person, he couldn't tell it that person was male or female, who was standing over a prone child. His hands were raised above his head, grasping one of the most hideous swords he had ever seen in his life. It was made of some sort of lightless metal, one that didn't reflect anything, and was spiked. 

"NOOOO!"he screamed, and the blade descended.

He flashed to SSJ.

He still didn't make it.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

"I tried," he sobbed into his mother's shoulder.Gohan didn't know what else to say, he had seen so many deaths, done his own fighting since he was four, and was a creature bred to kill. Then, why did the death of one little child make him want to scream, pound his fists, and pull out is hair? He didn't feel rage, this was something different. It was failure, and depression. Impotence. His confidence was shot.

Chichi absently held him, trying to keep breathing in his crushing hug. "You did all that you could. You know that. The police couldn't have done any better…"

Gohan hadn't wanted to face Videl after it had happened. He didn't want her to see him as some kind of failure.

"Have you gone to see Bulma yet?" Chichi asked, still patting her 'little boy's' head. 

He sniffled loudly, remembering the expression on the boy's face, his fear, and the awful look of hope that covered his face, when he thought that he might be rescued. He couldn't have been older than Goten

Goku handed him a tissue.

"No," Gohan whispered weakly.

Chichi smiled at him then. "Maybe she has found something out that might be helpful." Goku had been listening the whole time, and nodded. 

"I'll take you," he said, and grabbed his son's shoulder without warning, placing two fingers on his forehead. Then, they were gone. Chich sighed, not knowing if it was in relief or vexation.

"What will I do with those two? I guess that means they will be over at Bulma's for dinner." Sighing again, she decided to do the dishes.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Morning was Karen's favorite time of day. 

She stood on the edge of the cliff, looking towards the east, as false dawn colored the sky a steely blue. Humming to herself, she opened her mouth to sing the first notes of the song of morning, what her village elders had said must never be missed, or the sun wouldn't have enough courage to rise that day. The language she sang in hadn't been spoken in centuries, and nowhere was it recorded. The cliff face and the nearby hills and peaks echoed her voice back to her, forming a strange harmony that ended abruptly, as the first rays of the sun shyly appeared over the horizon.

Still, the memory of it hung in the air, fragile as spun glass, and the next sound would break it.

"That was…interesting," said a deep voice behind her. Turning, Karen made eye contact with Piccolo. She gave an ironic bow.

"It is a song that I learned in my childhood," she said, and this time he looked at her measuringly.

"How long do you have left in this camping trip of yours?" he asked, wondering why he cared. True, she had learned so fast that he wondered if all he had done was show her the door way to her own power. He was still stronger than she was, in brute force, but she was craftier. She had done moves that he had thought were impossible, and for a Namek, that was saying something. She had mastered flying in a few hours, and then went on ki blasts. At this point she had mastered everything he had to teach her. 

Which, even he had to admit, was incredible.

"Would you believe that I have been on this particular camping trip for years?" she asked, not really listening to him. It had occurred to her that she hadn't been keeping track of the years the way that she had been, and that she may have to go into civilization sooner than she would have liked.

Piccolo was, well, flabbergasted. While Goku had been raised in the wild, that was because he was a child and didn't know any better. Most humans lived with other humans, few ever did as he or the Turtle Hermit ever did. And Master Roshi could never be said to be much of a hermit anymore.

"Don't humans have, well, family and stuff?"

"None."

For some reason this disturbed him. Family was a part of what humans were, they didn't reproduce asexually the way his kind could. 

"You must be related to someone."

"No, I'm not. What's the date?" she asked suddenly, changing the subject. Karen didn't like to go into her past, and since she hadn't told him of her immortality, she felt it would be best to keep things like that unsaid. Her past was poignant and bloody. Sometimes plain scary, and not good story telling.

The sun was making a bloody stain on the ground in front of them, while the sky was turning bright orange. 

Piccolo told her the date, off balance because of her sudden change of topic.

_I only have about a day,_ she realized. Well the trip wouldn't be so bad, now that she knew how to fly.

"I need to make a trip to West City, could you tell me the way there?"

"Why are you going there?" he asked, feeling confused, and bleedin' annoyed about it.

"I have an appointment to keep."

"After how many years you have been out here, which I will believe you about, no human I have ever met has ever had clothing so…archaic, you are going into a city. Dressed like that?"

She gave him an unexpected grin. "I told you I had no fashion sense."

He sighed. He would miss having her as a sparing partner; she was one of the best he had had in years.

"I know someone who might be able to help you there," he told her. _Why the heck am I wanting to help her? She's human, and weak._

_Right, and I am a purple Saiyan._

__Karen was taken aback, and blinked.

"I'll show you the way there."

Piccolo then took off towards Goku's house.

To be continued.


End file.
